Sarah Yerkes with PBS
Tunisia's President Kais Saied on Monday suspended parliament indefinitely and fired the country's defense minister — one day after he unilaterally fired the prime minister. Nick Schifrin reports on moves that critics call a coup — one decade after the Arab Spring — with Sarah Yerkes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Doug Bandow, National Interest
There are no easy answers for the Biden administration—and perhaps no answers at all involving Beijing.
Geopolitical Futures
In this glimpse into the next 19 years, we forecast several significant changes and disruptions in the global structure, which will be summarized here. However, one fact that will not change is the United States' position as the sole global power. Over the next 19 years, it will adopt a new strategy to maintain power at the lowest possible cost. This strategy will resemble isolationism, in that the U.S. will not be drawn into regional military conflicts in any significant capacity. Читать дальше...
Matthew Karnitschnig, Politico EU
BERLIN — Just weeks before a crucial German election, the country's chancellor, ignoring loud protests from Eastern Europe, clinches a landmark accord for a gas pipeline under the Baltic that will strengthen the influence of Russia's cunning leader over Europe's energy security.
Paul Roderick Gregory, Hoover
The Biden administration is lifting its opposition to Russia's Nord Stream 2 undersea pipeline, according to a joint US-German announcement last week. This decision gives Russia's President Vladimir Putin his Holy Grail: a Europe fueled by Russian energy. Even better, Putin will give up nothing in return. Instead, he can continue his aggressive posture in the Black Sea and his threats to Ukraine's statehood. Ukraine will lose transit fees...
Thomas Kellogg & Kaylee Morrison, FP
The national security law is a direct threat to foreign firms.
D. Hearst, Middle East Eye
The Tunisian president has proved to be the source of political instability. He has ruled by swerving from threat to emollience and back again
Geopolitical Futures
Stewart Patrick, World Politics Review
As the author Daniel Deudney explains in an extraordinary new book, "Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity," the world is hurtling into a new space age—and courting new, potentially existential risks in the process. The core assumption underlying today's surging government and private sector activity is that the icy realms of outer space will somehow deliver to humanity the...
J. Chia & S. Singer, The Diplomat
The Milk Tea Alliance defies our typical understanding of a grassroots movement. It is first and foremost virtual, birthed from an innocuous tweet from Thai actor Vachirawit "Bright" Chiva-aree that labeled Hong Kong a country. From there, a Twitter/Sina Weibo war between pro-Beijing wumao - paid pro-Chinese internet trolls - and Thai netizens spiraled into an anti-CCP alliance incorporating internet users in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since then, the Milk... Читать дальше...
Alyssa Ayres, Foreign Affairs
As a guest at the G-7 summit in the United Kingdom in June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a special session on "open societies," where he highlighted his country's "civilizational commitment to democracy, freedom of thought, and liberty." Modi's remarks were laudable, as was India's support for a G-7 joint statement reaffirming a "shared belief in open societies, democratic values and multilateralism." Yet only months before, the democracy watchdog... Читать дальше...
Anthony Elghossain, Newlines
Behold, Beirut: our capital and last — still-surviving, ever-besieged — Levantine city. Strolling through its streets and squares, I marvel at our vacant and vacated capital. To the left, I see two towering monstrosities: a church and a mosque, more cages of cliché we trap ourselves in, now just mausoleums for men who made or remade them. To the right, I see a so-called historic district that looks like the pop-fantasia of a drugged-up, first-year architecture student. Читать дальше...
Loren Thompson, Forbes
In 1919, Ralph D. Paine began a brief history of the old U.S. merchant marine with these words:
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Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
Biden may believe that drawing a line under the Afghan war will allow the US to concentrate on more urgent problems. Sadly, he may just have created a new Afghan crisis that will come back to haunt him.
Rashmee Roshan Lall, The National
The aftermath of the assassination of Haiti's president Jovenel Moise has made apparent the country's extreme precariousness. It has no head of state, no functioning legislature until recently, two rival acting prime ministers, as well as a third claimant to power - the head of the senate; and the head of Haiti's supreme court died from the coronavirus in June.
Martin Ivens, Bloomberg
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
Kodak bends the knee for the Chinese Communist Party, whose influence now stretches into America through our own storied companies.
Ben Caspit, Al Monitor
The Pegasus Project affair brings back to the headlines Israel's glorious status as the leader in cyber technology and champion of intelligence gathering. But the line separating glory from ignominy is often blurred and fragile in the Middle East. Israel is the region's "cyber queen" and
Elliott Zaagman, Lowy Interpreter
As Beijing attempts to tackle some shared world problems,
its opaque regime means the benefits are limited.